03 October 2006

Is this a fly or a moth? Quick tell me before I smack it with my duck!

A stalk-eyed fly (Diopsidae). The exaggerated eye-span is thought to be partly driven by sexual selection, with females preferring males with wider eye-spans. Members of this 200-strong family are Old World dipterans favouring stream-side habitats. It's much tinier than it looks. Barely a centimetre long, my duck deemed it too small to be worth smacking (actually I didn't want to risk impaling my duck on the sharp spines on its thorax).

Another insect too puny to be smacked as it would spill dusty wing powder all over my duck and result in ejaculatory, sorry respiratory problems. It has the wings of a moth and the head of a bug-eyed antelope.

This is Angel's favourite insect! Doesn't it have a rather lovely mottled brown pattern on its wings? And aren't those twitchy antennae just anerable? I even hear that if you bring some home, they will perform useful housekeeping duties such as clearing away leftovers and other organic waste while you sleep! There's even have a whole movie where they sing and dance, proving their infinite worth to hairless ducks apes in need of roommates that will survive a nuclear winter. Don't you just wanna squeeze them til they crunch?